Thursday, November 20, 2008

Once again, with feeling... I have green roofs on the brain right now, because upon cracking open my new (and god-awful expensive) copy of Steven Cantor's Green Roofs in Sustainable Landscape Design - to find a double spread of Multnomah County's green roof on chapter one... a design I did while at my previous employer (and a beautiful wildflower meadow). Also, we had another 3000 sf project that went into the Pearl district here in Portland last week. It's good to see the old and the new converge. Look for a review of the book, and some photos of the project soon.

For the worldwide examples, a new version of Veg.itecture. Starting off, the Dinastia Competition by Pascal Arquitectos - via World Architecture News: "Regarding the common areas it was decided to make them independent in each tower in order to use the rooftops and leaving another free section at the bottom: this concept, of building only at the center of the terrain, will allow to have more green areas..."

Taking a turn to the strange, a competition to realize Will Alsop's vision for Wellesley Road... via WAN: "The competition brief envisages that a mix of building types and forms, parks, meadows, squares and other aspects of public realm could exist to the east and west of the downsized road. Diversity is a key word - Will Alsop talks of a series of external 'living rooms', the furniture being relatively small-scale buildings sitting against the backdrop of the existing skyscrapers." Whoa!

To veer from illustrative projects to a simple built one, via Arch Daily. OUTrial house by KWK PROMES offers a mitigation effort for a site intrusion, by folding and tucking the building features under the earth: "A green clearing surrounded by forest was the only context for the proposed small house. Hence the idea to “carve out” a piece of the grass-covered site, move it up and treat it as the roofing to arrange all the required functions underneath."

More via Arch Daily: "When the whole was ready, the client came up with another request, to create some space for a small recording studio and a conservatory. The latter was obtained by linking the ground floor with the grassy roof through an “incision” in the green plane and “bending” the incised fragment down, inside the building."

Next, Dwell featured a design by the Bouroullec brothers: "Inspired by age-old techniques of bending tree branches into functional shapes over the course of their slow growth, the Bouroullecs designed their Vegetal Chair to mirror the asymmetry and organic basket-style of woven branches."